Looking back a little on the issue of resource centres and what we thought they could do for youth:
A Day in the Life of Education Base
In a refugee settlement in East Africa there is a complex of buildings which can be reached on foot by most of the people of the settlements. It is situated near the refugees' self-help secondary school and next to two primary schools. The centre is also 'home' in term-time to more than a hundred students who have built their own huts in a 'dormitory area' behind the centre. The following is a description of a typical day in this centre before the refugees moved gradually to farm their own shambas when the government moved towards promoting self-suffiency..
5.30 - 630 a.m.: Students cultivate the garden to raise food for themselves to supplement their rations. Their garden and the nearby plantations (an NGO project) are also used as demonstration plots.
8 - 8.30 a.m.: Students put on their uniform and walk across the valley to schoo1...The library opens but it is not very busy in the mornings. Today refugee and national shop-keepers arrive for a seminar on the marketing of family planning items, arranged by another NGO, using the large thatched open-walled meeting-rooms.
Later, the generator is put on so that a technical demonstration can be made to a vocational group and so water can be pumped up from the valley. The Centre is the 'post office' for the camps, hosts one of the main bulletin boards and has a stationery shop, so there is a gradual flow of people in and out all day. By 4 p.m. the reading-areas arc being 'booked' by students for evening study.
5 -7 p.m.: In the evening there are volleyball games, a cultural group practises on the centre's instruments and a drama group rehearses. The heat of the day has cooled off and there is an atmosphere of relaxation as the students who are not on cooking-duty play games, stroll or just chat with friends.
On Saturdays, young people come from all over the camps for a video show. The generator goes off at ten p.m. and the library closes.
Solar lighting, however, is kept on an hour longer in the reading areas.
Similar activities take place in other centres. Not all are in the refugee settlements; some are found in urban areas. In Congo there are centres linked with the youth’s own radio stations and they play a very important role: providing something for decent young people to do in an area where it is very easy to join the militia.
These centres are not all Education Bases, they do not all do the same things, and they certainly do not belong to Echo Bravo. Nevertheless, this document proposes an overall framework for these centres to operate.
Echo Bravo believes that with its spirit of consultation, those youth who wish to set up centres, or those organisations who wish to help the youth to do this, will appreciate having some guidelines.
Where necessary, and where invited, Echo Bravo is prepared to set up these centres, train people how to run them and, crucially, adapt them to local needs.
In IDP camps, for instance an Education Base may need to provide a stationery shop and video shows. In an urban area it maybe concerned with helping young entrepreneurs to improve their skills.
Echo Bravo! stands for Education Base, or even for Education without Borders.
Echo Bravo! is an organisation of students, teachers, researchers and consultants who work in education in East Africa and beyond. Based in Uganda,
Echo Bravo! draws on experience from Kenya, Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda and DR Congo.
Echo Bravo! has particular experience in helping young people get an education in very difficult circumstances.
Echo Bravo! has a great deal of experience in refugee and displaced peoples’ camps, in deprived areas, and in war zones.
This document describes the Education Base, a centre for young people where they can get support for their activities, where they can learn more by using a library or the internet or simply where they can come if they have some free-time.
An Education Base will be a drop-in centre in a near a market and taxi-park or in the central area in a camp. It might be in a shop building rented for the purpose, or purpose-built in a large
compound.
It will be open from early morning until late at night. It will actively encourage participation by girls and by unemployed youth.
In some case Echo Bravo will setup and manage Education Base. In others, youth themselves will request assistance to do it. In either case young people will have a major role in managing
Education Base.
Echo Bravo offers a package: establishing standards, providing training courses, materials and advice and helping local Echo Bravos set up independent Education Bases with youth partners.
The attraction for donors and partners to support any Echo Bravo, will be the quality being offered
Youth and their Dilemma
A teenager selling newspapers in the street in a town in the region was berated publicly by the District Commissioner for being a lazy street boy.
The Commissioner failed to see that any boy who is trying to live on the tiny percentage from selling newspapers is certainly a boy who as taken a decision not to be a thief and that he should be praised, not condemned, especially as in this case he was supporting his sister in school. It is not his fault that he does not have a desk in an office, or that the Commissioner has such unsympathetic views.
All over Africa young people are confronted with the obstacles that lie in their way their way to a future, better, life. These are obstacles to do with poverty, with war and conflict, with disease, with mismanagement, with exclusion and with discrimination. Young people cannot solve all or even most of these root causes, nor can their well-wishers.
Some, faced with these obstacles and filled with energy, anger and frustration in equal parts, opt to take a risky short-term route to abetter future. They join gangs, they become soldiers in various militias, they become petty criminals, they become part-time prostitutes. These are not always choices; it is easy to slip into these activities just to have some friendship and a crust to eat. Society does not help much by simultaneously condemning them and providing nothing for them.
Others ‘venture’. Like teenagers throughout history, they become wanderers, refugees or migrate to the cities, always in the hope of something better.
Still other young people, and these are the great majority, do not go down this road. They try their best to find a job, they postpone their desires (not an easy thing at the age of 18), they look for small tasks; above all they seek to improve themselves, by staying in school or by doing courses.
Giving youth the opportunity to do something to improve themselves is what Education Base is all about. It is about giving an alternative, about opening another door. Education Base will not go looking for the lazy or those who believe that some government will always be there to look after them. Education Base will challenge the youth and say: work out what will help you most for the future and we will try to help you with it.
Young people have identified many of the problems already and, in one proportion or another, the same problems are found again and again. To give just two examples.
1) Young people want some skills. The official vocational skills courses in most countries are too long, and you cannot earn any money while doing them It is required to spend two or three years to do Motor-Vehicle Maintenance (with capital letters), for example. Yet you can learn to maintain a car (small letters) in much less time than that, particularly if you learn it bit by bit while you are working in a garage.
2) Many girls cannot complete formal school because they are absent so often. Girls are told to stay at home to look after the sick, look after the baby and so on. If the school system looked hard at this problem they could find some solutions. It could simply be a matter of allowing the girl to come to school classes in the evening instead of the morning (a lot of people would benefit from that, boys girls, young adults) or agreeing with the mother that one girl in the family takes a year off this year and another child next year. Or closing the school on market-day and opening on Saturday instead.
Education Base tries to help with these problems, by looking at them from the point of view of the youth who need help. Education Base has, over the years identified the main groups of youth who want to work for a better future. Many young people, fall into more than one group. In each location moreover youth give different priorities. In towns they will often say that English is a high priority; in rural areas they may be more general about their need for education.
A researcher for Echo Bravo in Northern Uganda described the situation in Gula as follows: The youth engage in different income generating activities to meet the day-to-day challenges. Some of the activities they do include, digging (Leja-leja or casual labour work), selling of foodstuffs and beverages in the bus parks and the trading centres, working as casual labourers on construction sites. Others work in the transport sector as boda boda / bicycle or motorcycle transport, pushcart owners, taxi/bus touts and conductors. Given the poor economic situation, many find themselves in a position of contributing to the livelihood of their families with the little they earn.
Some do not know what might be available to help them. A simple two-day bee-keeping course has given a lot of people in Congo and Uganda a little help on the first step of the economic ladder. Simple providing some modern books of dress patterns helped a tailoring cooperative. A one-day workshop on ‘pleasing the customer’ encouraged some craftsmen to introduce variety into their products when after finally asking their customers what they wanted, the customers told them they were not buying because they already had everything that was on offer.
These are some of them:
· Those who have had to leave school, the drop-outs (or push-outs!)
· Unemployed youth
· Demobilised youth/ those who want to leave the militias
· Employed youth who want to upgrade.
· Self-employed youth, including those with a talent like painters, or musicians
· The disabled
Need for advice
Youth are also in need of personal advice. Education Base usually links with counselling partners, and with HIV/AIDS counsellors in these cases. In Congo they have connections with VCT centres.
In rural areas things are also different. In a small, very isolated town in Sudan, there are primary schools, but there is no secondary school There is no place to read, no way to be kept up to date. There is nothing for young people to do for most of the day, even if they are able to cultivate. Bright minds soon become dull. Those who want to improve themselves soon leave, if they can. Education Base in a place like this would start with a reading-room, a book-box and some training for volunteer teachers, This would be a Sub-base, run by a former secondary student, and would be 'under' a mother-centre.
Need for entertainment
We must not forget the needs, which are real needs, for entertainment, for quizzes debates, for improving general knowledge. Education Bases have libraries, access to the internet and satellite TV. They also have indoor and outdoor games and in two cases, at the request of youth, they have a collection of musical instruments so that local bands can play.
The network of youth centres in Ituri in Congo, called ‘Clubs Espoir de demain’ follow many of the principles of Education Base. They were started by the youth themselves, but they have a particular characteristic: they grew from another activity the youth had already started, that is, setting up and running FM Youth Community Radios. Education Base will use their expertise for those who wish to do the same.
In the next sections we look at some of the problems and how they could be solved in Education Base, in more detail.
Problems of education and training
The problems related to education are many. Education Base can offer some solutions, but it is not designed to replace the primary school system for children of the right age. Nor should it replace secondary schooling, though it can certainly complement it.
Drop-outs, push-outs
Those who leave school before they should or before they want to are the' drop-outs' and the majority of them are girls. They drop out for many reasons. Some drop out because the school is not giving them anything they want or because it is boring and not relevant to what they know they need. Others drop out because they cannot afford to stay in school, not only because they did not have money, but because their family needed their services at home, on the farm or in the market (opportunity cost). In most cases, of course they didn’t drop out, but they were ‘pushed out’ by the obstacles.
There may also be ‘social' reasons. In some societies, girls who marry early are not allowed to return to regular school attend classes.
Another group are the ‘stranded students', often displaced people or those with family problems, who had started school before their lives were disrupted and now have no way to start again.
Here are problems identified by youth in several countries:
Schools and costs
· There are not enough schools.
· Many schools provide a poor quality education that takes too long.
· Schools are very expensive. More and more of the costs of schooling, especially after primary level, are borne by parents and by the students themselves.
· Governments are able to provide less and less help. In most cases there is none at all.
Courses and syllabuses
· Normal courses are too long. Six or seven years in primary school, which with repetition and time out of school often becomes nine or ten years, is often too long. Families cannot release all their children for that length of time.
· Schools do not teach the subjects young people need so they can be self-supporting. Syllabuses are often based on knowledge, rather than skills. They are also very slow to change.
· In the rare cases when skills are available in schools or institutes they are rarely taught in a way which enables the pupils and students to become self-reliant quickly.
Lack of flexibility
· Students may have to do their studies while they are earning an income.
· Schools are not offering a choice which helps the young person, who no longer has the time to waste on trigonometry when what she needs is book-keeping skills or a driving licence.
· School times are not flexible enough for those who have to earn a living and especially for girls and women. Housework, trading, garden and farm work are done in the mornings.
· Schools rarely provide weekend, afternoon or evening options. When they do, they are not consistently provided, so that, for instance, a student can be sure that she can attend in the afternoon every year of her course.
· The school certificate is too rigid. It is impossible to learn single subjects. .
· Impossible to do courses in a different way, faster or perhaps broken up into modular units or sub-courses, or to do only the courses they want to do - or need to do - rather than follow a syllabus which gives them more material than they need.
Independent learning
· There is no place to study, especially in the evenings
· There is no source of reference books
The Education Base can become a designated centre for a distance learning course. Many distance programmes evolve into a sort of half-way house, where a tutor, who is meant to be provide occasional support, becomes a fulltime teacher.
Support for teachers
We should not forget that one way of supporting education efficiently is to support the teachers. So, even if the teachers are not ‘youth’ most Education Bases respect them and welcome them to contribute and use the facilities, even to the extent of using the rooms for coaching lessons (assuming that financial issues are controlled).
· Some Education bases may provide laboratory equipment or visual aids on loan; in one case the teachers’ union set up a laboratory within the Education Base.
· Similarly the Education Base is often used for printing examinations.
· Education Base is often used for refresher courses for teachers, giving them a chance to upgrade.
Other educational needs
· access to general knowledge
· information on current affairs
· civic and political education
· cultural education
· educational advice
· Catch-up and remedial classes
Earning some income, improving skills, and getting on the road to self-reliance
In the unplanned, but busy, area of Katwe in Kampala, there are many craftspeople and artisans. Most are self-employed and live near their premises with their families. The official city barely recognises the existence of Katwe though the transport sector, building industry and commercial life of the city depend on the repair and manufacturing skills found there.
Education Base can provide support to young people in a place like Katwe. The Base can help them by being
· a training centre, where short relevant courses can be done on an hourly or daily basis, or in the evenings after work
· an education centre, with a library and reading facilities, providing courses like book-keeping and English
· an office enabling the member to quote an address and a telephone number on invoices and correspondence. There could be a typist and access to a part-time accountant, a small-business adviser and someone to help with tax.
Needs of Youth: from survey in Uganda
In a survey of equal numbers of boys and girls, conducted in Northern Uganda
· 70% of the respondents expressed a strong desire to attend a skills training education that can enable them acquire immediate employment so as to improve on their earnings and meet their needs.
· 14% of the respondents were interested in attending short professional courses
· 7% of the respondents wished to continue with formal system of education so as to attain the highest level of education (university) in order to compete for professional career opportunities. Several welcomed the idea if it could be accelerated.
· 6% of the respondents did not have any idea of what they could do since from their childhood they had never had a chance to go to school
Only 1% expressed interest in modern agriculture farming methods!
The respondents were specific about what they would like to learn. Education Base would regard Business Studies as essential – as a support, not as an independent course in itself, but as a support.
1) Business studies, Book-keeping, Customer care: the ability and attitude necessary to woo customers and marketing, Stock control (as a book-keeping exercise), Writing business letters, Co-operatives, Managing time and money (and to handle family members who expect hand-outs). Confidence, which is an essential ingredient for success in the market cannot be taught conventionally, but arises from having worked with others and from being familiar with the market.
2) Other enabling courses*: Computer and Secretarial studies, Driving and simple mechanics, Teaching, English/French, Reception and telephone skills.
3) Art and Design, Bee keeping / marketing, Bicycle assembling and repair, Building and Concrete Practice, Carpentry and Joinery, Catering, cookery and hotel management, , , Automobile mechanic, Electrical/ electronics, Food Processing, Mechanical engineering, Modern Agricultural studies, Nursery and Day-care, Plumbing, Tailoring, Tool maintenance and repair , Welding and sheet metal work,
* Value-added: A person who can drive obviously has more economic value than a person who cannot. All other things being equal, he or she should be able to earn more. Another example, for a tailor, would be the ability to do a unique type of embroidery. In this case the skill itself probably enables the tailor to earn more money, but the uniqueness of the skill is also an important part of the added value.
Hiring out tools or lending resources
Consultation with working youth has shown that they would like to be able to hire a tool or access a manual, which is not cheap. Or easily available This already happens in urban markets. As an interim measure, where desired, Education Base would invest in such tools.
For tailors, this may mean a machine, which can do more complex stitches and a set of pattern books from which they can learn new styles. It is easy to imagine what other items could be held, such as diagnostic tools for motor vehicle mechanics.
Reacting to the market
“We trained 25 tailors every three months. Soon we had trained so many that they could hardly find any work to do. Before long we had wiped out the livelihood of the refugee tailors already working in the market ... No one had ever checked if there was actually a need for more tailors. The fact that people wanted to be tailors was enough to encourage us to train them. (Extract from an NGO report)”
All these new elements in the economy have produced their own supporting sectors, ranging from motor-bike repairs, the increased number of petrol stations, making a back passenger cushion for a bicycle, ‘unlocking’ mobile phones brought from overseas (quickly and easily done in Kampala) and a spirit of enterprise and confidence that was not evident in Uganda just a few short years ago.
Short courses
Vocational education which lasts two or three years in schools and institutes is unnecessary in most cases. Many useful skills can be taught in one-day or one-week course. A good example in one area was a bee-keeping course which lasted only two days, but which was thoroughly comprehensive and practical. Forty people walked or cycled, some over very long distances, to attend the course. An NGO had paid the facilitator, but the particpantss were not paid any incentive to attend.
How to occupy time usefully in locations which have few facilities
In many of the areas where Echo Bravo has worked the low state of the economy and the political or military situation has drastically reduced the opportunities for young people to break out of isolation (‘join the world’) and to have even simple entertainment. In many places the evenings are not safe for boys, let alone girls.
Education Base cannot directly address the causes but believes it is addressing them indirectly.
The problem boils down to: 1) a place to be, 2) something to do, 3) a way to feel less isolated.
In many cases what youth need is simply a place to go to, in order to read, to hold discussions or to organise self-help classes. A place to hang out with friends without the ethnic issue being important; though this may need to be worked at.
In one place, everything seemed to be going well when there was only one Education Base. However when a second opened in another part of town because it was felt that more would be able to come with a centre near them, the two centres suddenly were regarded as belonging to one tribe each. It was a great setback, and revealed, as previously mentioned, that Education Base cannot solve fundamental problems by itself. In this case, the fact that the town was ethnically divided.
Education Base can provide various types of entertainment, organised by the youth:
· video shows (avoiding, if possible, violence and pornography)
· cultural activities
· debates (encouraging the debaters to use the facilities to do some research)
· drama productions
· quizzes
· various sports and games (indoor and outdoor)
· discos, where the culture allows
· radio, TV (satellite and video/DVD)
Active, not only passive: Education Base as Club
For many of these activities it is useful to regard the Education Base as a club or as hosting a group of clubs. This is encouraged as it is here that seeds of organisation, leadership and management are sown. As previously mentioned, these are a crucial part of the development of young people and their society. It is within these activities that we painlessly ‘smuggle’ civic education and ideas of democracy, freedom and good governance.
Advice and counselling on educational and personal matters
Education Base has sometimes been called the ‘Student’s Friend’ or the Young Person’s friend. One of the reasons for this is that many organisers of Education Base arrange to provide advice for the members. This can be educational advice, careers advice, counselling or it can be life skills education.
This is normally done with a partner.
Psychosocial counsellingThis is particularly true for psycho-social counselling which is NOT to be done by people who are not trained. A psychosocial programme requires experienced staff with professional expertise, but most of all it needs to carry through what has been started -- since half-counselling may be as disastrous.
Life Skills
'Life Skills refers to the set of psychological and social skills which we develop as we get older.
HIV/AIDS
Education about HIV /AIDS, STIs, pregnancy
is particularly important in disrupted communities. It is most important to ensure that the campaign reaches girls and women. Campaigns which already exist in countries heavily hit by AIDS are often personal and very frank. Supporting agencies should be prepared for resistance to the frankness.
VCT
In the context of HIV/AIDS Education Base may make arrangements with a partner for testing and counselling.
Media/radio/publications
Education Base can encourage publishing of pamphlets and newsletters. A large base (known also as mother-base) can have copy-print equipment.
A popular and useful activity is for the centre to host a journalism club and run at least a wall-newspaper, if not a magazine. In Congo this has gone further: the youth often set up and run small local FM stations.
Indeed in Ituri, the club started with the radio, then became a Listening Club. Where the centre has sometimes grown from a local youth FM radio, at least one centre in a region would try to get studio and recoding equipment from donors.
Hosting
Education Base would be built with space to host many kinds of activities, provided by its own management or by others. These would range from a place for exams to be held occasionally (Education Base would develop a reputation for integrity, and probably provide the only safe around) to teacher’s unions, football clubs and musical groups.
In many cases Education Base would hope to raise funds for equipment, such as musical instruments which could be loaned.
As far as sports are concerned, depending on the land available, the centre would provide marked out pitches, at least for volleyball and similar activities.
Demonstrations and Models
Education Base can be used to provide demonstrations of good practice in many fields. For instance, the latrines should be clean and should illustrate the best hygienic methods. The VIP and similar latrine will not only be demonstrated but used.
Charts and demonstration models on topics such as health or agriculture should be displayed along with examples of appropriate technology. They should be displayed where as many people as possible will see them and use them and they should be updated regularly. .
In a different but equally important way the Base should show that it exists for all people, both girls and boys by providing equal facilities and an equal welcome to everyone.
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly Education Base will show that youth can manage a centre well and that participatory management by the users of Education Base can be exercised and valued and that leadership can be developed.
